Oct 11, 2012

It's
been almost a week since the defense of our thesis for the First Semester in
Software Engineering. Yet the sound of the word defense and the mixed
expression on the faces of my classmates after walking out from CEAC still
lingers in my head.

It was a
fine Saturday morning. Everyone was surprisingly early at school, except for
some who still rushes to the internet cafes
to print some documents for their defense. It was quite a busy day, which added
a thrill sensation of facing a panel of professionals that would certainly ask
questions about our study, from technical things to all sort of topics about
Software Engineering.

There were
five groups all in all with eight members each, except for one which has seven.
The first group to face the panel was Team ‘Kinect’ headed by Mr. Mark Kevin
Olores who is currently having his internship at Aboitiz Equity Ventures. They
presented and defended their thesis to the best that they could. After the
first group's moment of truth, the panel and guests were revealed. Supposed to
be, three faculty members from the Computer Engineering Department will serve
as the members of the panel, but unfortunately only two were available.
Aside from the panel, special guests were also present. These include
Madam Julie Tardieu, PN Philippines Education Manager, Mr. Guillaume Le
Cousine, IT Head and Mr. Rhey Anthony Laurente, a PN Philippines Alumni who
represents Zoog Technologies, Inc.

Next
group to impress the panel was ‘Tsuki’ team with Ms. Kriszia Cutamora as their
leader who is currently an intern at NEC. Though they had a little ideaon how things were going inside based on the
first group's feedbacks, responding to questions was tough. The third team, ‘Pro-Beginners’, with Mr. Neil
Jayson Dañe as the Project Manager and an
intern from Accenture, also shared the same fate with the first two. But
I'm pretty sure they were able to answer most of the questions as smiles were
very visibleon their faces when
they came out of CEAC room. The fourth group entered the room without any
hesitation in order to end the somewhat extended misery of tensions. Lead by
Mr. Pedro Libradilla, an intern from NCR, ‘Team Poraree’ squeezed out the
remaining of their strength to answer all the questions from the panel.

During
this time, my calm mind seemed to start rewinding oddly all the things I
prepared for our presentation. Every now and then, I kept noticing my team
mates glancing at the doorwhich
made me feel more nervous. The fourth group came out, a signal for our group to
be ready. Though we have the most
advantage since we were able to gather lots of feedbacks with the panel’s
questions, the feeling of uneasiness seemed to consume us. DS2, our
group, headed by our Project
Manager, Ms. Khristine Censon who is an intern from Trends and Technologies,
tried the very best to present and defend our thesis. Nevertheless we managed
to make it to the end, with discussions which I think as the weirdest of all
the groups since we received lesser questions from the panel and more
discussions between our client (Zoog Technologies Inc.), our advisers and the
panel.

Everything
suddenly felt light after the end of our defense. Sharing of experiences and
picture taking were the highlight at that moment. But it was not yet the end of
it, because our grades are yet to be announced after. That instance, the
feeling of tiredness was visible on the eyes of everyone. Some tried to take a
nap. Others continued chatting, while others were busy posing in front of the
camera. Then finally the result was announced. It was a merry moment after
hearing from our adviser that all had passed the defense. The sound of relief
was very audible in the cozy room. It was a great relief, after all the
numerous sleepless nights, weeks of preparation, research, documentation and
some sacrifices.

However,
we couldn’t have done it without our advisers – without their lectures,
advices,emails, text messages and most specially
support. They were the first to believe that even if we are not taking full
Computer Engineering courses, still we, Passerelles Numeriques scholars can do
it. For us, who works almost 5 days a week, a collaborative project to be
accomplished in a month or two with scattered members seem to be impossible to
accomplish.

Yet our advisers always tell us that we can do it! With proper time
management, plus following the principles of Software Engineering and probably
lesser TGIFs, we were able to make it. All these are because of our best
advisers and instructors, Mr. Godwin S. Monserate and Mr. Gran Sabandal!

In behalf of all PN
scholars, by writing this article, I would like to express my gratitude to
these great people who helped us a lot in accomplishing this event. It was a
great attainment for us and we are proud that we are the first batch to
experience such opportunity as PN scholars. I hope that our younger fellow
scholars would learn as much as what we have learned from you. The first phase
had passed; we hope that you would still be there in the second phase of our
projects. We know that the next phase will be harder, but we now fully believe
that we can do it. You have let us experienced what we thought was impossible
to do; now we will make sure that this second phase will surely happen and will
be more successful than the first one!

About the Author
Bryan CS is an IT scholar of Passerelles Numeriques and an aspiring Systems and Network Administrator who spent most of his spare time exploring things on the web and also blogging. Follow Bryan CS on twitter to get updates.

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